


you will remember this moment

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 04:17:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8696269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy takes care of an injured Coulson and things subtly change for her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



lf pressed, years later, she would probably think back and feel it was moments like this that did it. Not quiet or unimportant, just not the kind of moments she normally associates with that kind of revelations. She has never experienced that kind of revelation herself, so she finds it hard to recognize it when it comes.

 

+

 

“Are you watching that again?” Elena asks, coming into her makeshift bunk. She sighs and puts the tablet away. Inevitably she has repeated the layout of the Playground for this safe house. Safe building, actually.

“He just painted a target on his forehead,” Daisy says.

“It’s a very big forehead, he has the space,” Elena replies.

Daisy doesn’t quite take note of the joke.

“They asked him in front of the cameras,” the other woman goes on, sitting on the bed next to Daisy. “What did you want Agent Coulson to say? That Inhumans are evil? That we are dangerous?”

“No, of course not. But he could have been… less enthusiastic.”

She doesn’t mean that, of course she doesn’t. Coulson’s words on national television were a gift, making Daisy (but not just Daisy) feel supported and protected and cared for. But they were also stupid and dangerous words and since she heard them she has the feeling something horrible is going to happen to him, a familiar sensation at the bottom of her stomach and in her throat.

Elena picks up the tablet for a moment, staring at the paused video.

“I liked the part where he said we were just like humans with a little _something extra_.”

Daisy rolls her eyes a bit.

“Ah, yes, that’s a favorite expression of his. He’s said that before.”

Elena meets her eyes, seriously.

“Do you feel like that? Still human?”

“I do,” Daisy says, surprised she didn’t have to think about it. “I feel I am… _both_. My father was human, after all.”

“I don’t know where I got it from,” Elena says casually and Daisy wonders why they haven’t talked about this before. “My parents live in the country and we’re not in touch. Could be my mom, my dad, or both.”

She shrugs and doesn’t seem too curious about it. Daisy can’t imagine not being curious, but then again Elena didn’t have her childhood, isn’t obsessed with legacy like she is. For all that she and Elena are alike, they are also very different people.

 

+

 

Perhaps it’s the quiet moments after all. The ones that do it. That seal the deal. Perhaps it was years before, or somewhere in the future. Or now.

She can only hear his breathing, labored and vulnerable like an injured animal. The room is dark and everybody else has gone to sleep or are quietly working in their own rooms. They let Coulson have the biggest bed.

It was easier to bring him here than try to contact SHIELD. SHIELD doesn’t trust her that much these days, anyway. She doesn’t want their suspicions of her to put Coulson in danger. And here, they don’t have much, but they have a doctor. An Inhuman whose powers are discreet enough that she can blend in easily, but she chooses not to.

A shot in the back, seems fitting for the Watchdogs, for Coulson. High enough on the shoulder that the vest didn’t really help. Daisy keeps the bullet, wondering if Coulson would like to have it when he wakes up.

When he wakes up.

First night is touch and go, because of the fever, the slight infection around the gunshot.

Daisy keeps thinking about calling Mack, fearing Coulson might get worse here. He doesn’t get worse but she stays by his side, a vigil like in a Jane Austen book, until the room fills with the acrid scent of fever and sweat.

He hasn’t looked this fragile before - fragile? somehow she doesn’t want to use the word weak - not even when Garrett had the Clairvoyant kidnap and torture him and Daisy found him asking for death.

He used to seem so solid to her. It’s not a bad thing, though, that changing. It is a bad thing now, because he is in pain and Daisy would do anything to stop that (that’s not new). But solid is hard, and Coulson is not hard. He is tender. 

Tender means easy to tear, though. Daisy touches his shoulder carefully, as he shivers and writhes unconscious under the bedsheets he keeps kicking away and Daisy keeps pulling over him.

She would like to lie next to him and protect his body with hers, but what would Coulson think of that impulse. She tries it for a moment - is this the moment? will this be the moment she will point at when asked about it? - not touching him, just lying behind him and watching his body struggle to rise with each breath.

By the time someone shakes her awake for breakfast and the morning meeting she is back in her chair and Coulson is breathing a lot better. 

 

+

 

She is no doctor but he knows enough stuff to change the gauze on his back. She remembers everything Trip taught her about first aid, and she has patched herself up, or Elena, enough times.

Coulson is still out of it, not really aware that Daisy is here with her. His skin burning where she touches it, but the fever not as high as last night. His head keeps lolling and leaning against Daisy, his hair against her cheek as she makes sure his wound is healing properly. He so needs a shower. His breathing is a lot better though; she can finally get that terrible, labored noise out of her head. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. She hugs him from behind and maybe it’s unfair, because he won’t remember this, won’t remember Daisy’s forehead pressed against the hot, damp spot on his nape, or her hands skimming over his chest, locked together like armor around his soft ribcage and the sweet air in his lungs. Coulson is in her hands, literally, and they have never been so close, physically, and a greedy and monstrous and childish part of her savours the moment.

 

+

 

She is not here when he finallynwakes up (there’s been an incident - there’s always an incident, somewhere - two Inhumans trapped in a flat, cornered by Watchdogs, she has to hurry), and by the time she comes back from her mission they tell her it’s okay, Yo-Yo is keeping him company. So she takes her time and prepares some food for him.

When she enters the room with the tray it’s obvious he is feeling better. He still looks painfully pale and he can’t move his left arm, but he looks better. He is even smiling, as Elena is sitting cross-legged across from him on the bed, and they are playing some game of cards.

“Mira, si haces esto, yo te voy a pillar por aquí…” Elena is saying, and Daisy is pretty sure Coulson is losing this hand.

“So they weren’t lying, you’re awake,” Daisy says, hearing her own voice uncharacteristically cheerful, to the point where she barely recognizes it, but for once she is not forcing herself.

Coulson’s face lights up in a familiar way when he sees her come in, but maybe it’s only now that Daisy is realizing that it lights up, and how familiar it is, how many time she has seen this picture in the last few years. Maybe this is the moment she will remember - simple, happy, and something of a continuous memory. They are not just one moment, they are every moment that led to moments like this. 

“I need a shower,” he says.

Daisy smiles. “I’ll ask our doctor if that can be arranged.”

“Okay.”

Elena looks at the tray and gives Daisy a knowing nod.

“Saved by the bell,” Elena tells him, grabbing the deck and standing up.

“No fair, “ Coulson protests. “You didn’t give me the chance to-”

“To lose even more money?”

He silently concedes that point.

“I owe you thirty dollars.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll remember, agente,” Elena says, reaching the door. “You should pay up soon, there’s interest.”

Coulson chuckles very low, as if trying not to hurt himself.

Elena leaves them alone.

“How are you feeling?”

“Thirty dollars poorer,” he says, frowning at the door. “Better.”

“Just better or well enough to try to eat something?”

“The second one.”

“It’s just soup,” she warns him. “We have a lot of soup here.”

“Soup is fine.”

Daisy watches him eat with the patience and worry of a mother. They chat as he slowly finishes the bowl, hungry but struggling. It’s rude but Daisy can’t stop staring. Even though they can spend weeks without seeing each other having him here in her base of operations, but having him unconscious for most of it, seems like some extreme cruelty. Daisy has missed his eyes (maybe this is the moment, but she won’t know until years later). When he finishes and Daisy has put the bowl of soup away, he gives his shoulder a pained look.

“Just a little memento from the Watchdogs. You’ll be fine, I’ve got a few on my body.”

“Can I see them?” Coulson asks, eyes shining with the joke, a little more risqué than their usual.

Daisy chuckles, fake-slapping his good arm. “No!”

He chuckles too and the noise they make together, well, maybe it’s a bit forced, like they are trying to pretend this isn’t dangerous, this life, and it’s only good war stories and handsome scars. (Years later it will be war stories and handsome scars, but they don’t know this yet, and they don’t know why this moment matters, of all the moments)

Coulson scratches his neck, right above the collar of his shirt. He looks uncomfortable. Daisy needs to get him into the shower. And some clean clothes.

“Sorry to take up your time like this, I know you have enough on your plate right now,” he says. He treats the time they spend together like some kind of favor or fantastic boon she is bestowing upon him - which is a strange inversion, because Daisy remembers her first days on his team, after she first met him, a million years ago, when she felt it was such an honor for her to be around him and didn’t press but she cherished every conversation.

“It’s fine but maybe next time don’t say such nice things on tv,” Daisy tells him, half-joking but completely serious. He should take better care. “That stuff will get you shot at.”

“I don’t think I can promise that,” he replies.

Daisy nods. 

“Then I’ll save you a bunk here, just in case.”

She looks down, at the rumpled blanket over his legs, between them. The same bed where last night she lied by his side, watching his back.

“What?” she asks. Coulson keeps staring at her, at her face, in a familiar but strange way. “What’s up with my face?”

“I owe Elena thirty dollars but I owe you my life,” he says. “Thank you.”

She covers his good hand with hers. His skin no longer feels burning hot. It feels dry. (She will remember this moment, in particular; sometimes without the context, she will just remember Coulson recovering from an injury, sitting across the bed from him, touching his hand, how it felt like)

“Don’t mention it. We look after our own.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not Inhuman,” he points out, as if she didn’t know.

“No, but you are one of our own,” she tells him.

Coulson concedes the point.

 

+

 

If someone would ask her, years down the road, years after the fact, she would probably remember these few days, and those quiet and scary moments, when he was sleeping.

A couple of days later, recovered, he has to leave, go back to SHIELD. Daisy walks him to the door of the base. Not really a goodbye, and no promises when to meet again, just a shared certainty that they will somehow.

“Take care,” is all she says.

He just looks at her as if these hours in her company are a priceless gift.


End file.
